New genres-new roles for the audience?: An overview of recent research

Highlighting the emergence of new genres in the age of the internet and the simultaneous academic interest in their evolution, this paper reviews the literature on the emergence of such new genres. We follow broadly two directions in the research literature. Firstly, the novelty (or otherwise) of the generic features of the new texts and technologies that surround us, and, secondly, related new things which audiences and users, are expected to learn and do. Organised as an indicative, and far from exhaustive, review of contemporary literature, we bring together the largely scattered conversation happening in the field, to provide a useful starting point for empirical pursuits in this area. We suggest that such an attempt is necessary in the field at this time for two reasons. To begin with, a variety of rich research in and orbiting these matters seems to be happening around us and it is perhaps time to weave this into a cohesive narrative. Furthermore, there is an interdisciplinary nature to these questions - scholars working on literacy theory, information systems and media studies ponder these questions alike and, to that end, we aim to highlight some of the resources that may be available to those of us who wish to empirically pursue this area in future research.